4 Reasons to Ditch Blogger and Transfer to WordPress

So you’ve taken the first step and have started some free blogging at Google’s free blogging service, Blogger, in addition to garnering a small community of followers.

What now?

It’s time to switch to WordPress, of course. Here’s why:

1. Intellectual Property Rights

Did you know that while creating your Blogger blog, you agreed to let Google use any part of your content without your consent to essentially promote any of their services? Furthermore, if your blog makes it onto one of their famous commercials, you’ll never see a cent. Here’s the article in their terms of service which makes this clear, with emphasis added:

6. Intellectual Property Rights. Your Intellectual Property Rights. Google claims no ownership or control over any Content submitted, posted or displayed by you on or through Google services. You or a third party licensor, as appropriate, retain all patent, trademark and copyright to any Content you submit, post or display on or through Google services and you are responsible for protecting those rights, as appropriate. By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through Google services which are intended to be available to the members of the public, you grant Google a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to reproduce, publish and distribute such Content on Google services for the purpose of displaying and distributing Google services. Google furthermore reserves the right to refuse to accept, post, display or transmit any Content in its sole discretion.

By using a self-hosted version of WordPress, you not only are guaranteed that you will be able to completely control the licenses under which you distribute your content, but that you’ll be able to collect payment for such use as well.

2. Total Control

Article 10 of the very same terms of service also states that Google holds the right to completely delete your account and blog at anytime and for any reason they see fit. Furthermore, you do not retain the right to ever receive backup copies as well, meaning you could loose all of your data and entries.

10. Termination; Suspension. Google may, in its sole discretion, at any time and for any reason, terminate the Service, terminate this Agreement, or suspend or terminate your account. In the event of termination, your account will be disabled and you may not be granted access to your account or any files or other content contained in your account although residual copies of information may remain in our system for some time for back-up purposes.

Through a self-hosted version of WordPress you retain total control over your website. This means that you can easily setup automatic and even daily backups, and decide to run your blog or terminate it on your own terms. While working with a hosting company runs the same risks, they certainly will not delete your account for non-obscene content they find disagreeable, while Google certainly can.

3. Flexibility

While Blogger certainly allows the average blogger the ability to easily modify widgets with its basic templates, a completely custom website can be very difficult to achieve. The issue is that Blogger fails to support the use of PHP for what they state are security reasons. Unfortunately, this means that many of the awesome features you see on WordPress blogs or websites are simply not possible on Blogger blogs.

4. Professionalism

When it comes down to it, reasons one, two, and three all prove that WordPress is the more professional choice. Whether you want a completely customized digital presence, or the freedom to post any type of content you wish (within reason!), the self-hosted version of WordPress will provide you with the platform necessary to build an engaging and professional website or blog.

Best of all? It’s completely free and open source. This fact has helped create a great user community, constantly putting out new updates and better features.

Interested in building your WordPress site today? Contact us!